On the Yard

by Malcolm Braly

  He studied these pictures off and on through the night. Then at 4 A.M. he went up and unlocked the cells on the mess hall and kitchen bars, and at four-forty the officer pulled the bars releasing the white-uniformed cooks, waiters, and kitchen utility men to straggle down, bitching monotonously and without real bitterness, to prepare a breakfast certain to please only the head steward who wouldn’t, of course, eat it.

  At five Jo-Jo started unlocking the entire block. He walked rapidly along the tiers, his steps exactly metered so it was three steps, key in, turn and out, three steps, key in, turn and out. He never broke stride, never missed the keyhole or bound the key turning it, and the men waking up in the cells would hear a metronomic series of clicks, gradually rising or falling in pitch, depending upon whether Jo-Jo was moving towards or away from them, and after listening awhile to see if the rhythm would falter, they thought when it didn’t, “That nut Jo-Jo’s on the key.”

  Terrence Preston followed Jo-Jo’s progress from the gun rail, watching with fascination as he had every morning since he had been assigned the post, still waiting for Jo-Jo to miss while hoping he wouldn’t.

  Only a moron, Preston had concluded, could be capable of such single-minded concentration. Anyone with even the most rudimentary spark of intelligence would think something—that would at times throw him off his rhythm, but Jo-Jo moved on, robotic and inexorable and, Preston imagined, mindless as the broom enchanted by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

  Actually, in a small crystal globe deep in his slow brain, Jo-Jo was still smoothing the satin lapels of his dinner jacket and telling the girl something nice about her hair, and the hypnotic click of the key entering lock after lock was as remote as the street noises outside the imaginary restaurant.

  5

  THINK OF all them fools out there bustin their asses so them bitches can sit under those hair dryers,” Chilly Willy said idly.

  It was six-thirty by his watch. He knew the sun was probably shining already out there in the free world, but it hadn’t yet crested the high walls of the big yard. Chilly was cold but he was trying not to show it. He had read somewhere that if you relaxed when you were cold, rather than hunching and shivering, it was easier to bear. It seemed to be true. He wasn’t comfortable, but neither was he giving anyone the satisfaction of appearing uncomfortable.

  “Sure,” Society Red was saying, “but look at all the bedtime action those fools are getting.” Red jumped up, spun around and shouted “Hot cock!” like a street vendor.

  “That’s a trick’s notion,” Chilly Willy said, amused scorn playing in his eyes. “I don’t know, Red, I’m trying to educate the fool out of you, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t buried too deep.”

  “I ain’t real swift,” Red acknowledged slyly. “If I was I wouldn’t be beating this yard morning after morning.”

  Chilly smiled at the shaft. Red was the type of stud that just when you were sure he was a fool and a clown came up with something half sharp.

  The two men were watching the other inmates straggling from the mess hall. It was a hungry morning. There were three such mornings and today’s was French toast, an offering so distorted in mass production that it was often referred to as fried linoleum. Another hungry morning featured a stack of thick and sodden hot cakes cooked hours before. The third and most dreaded was a notorious concoction known as the square egg, prepared from powdered eggs and fatback, baked into rubbery sheets, which were cut into square servings. The square egg was universally regarded as inedible.

  Hungry mornings meant little to Chilly Willy. He seldom ate mainline chow. At the moment he was looking for someone who owed him, who could be pressured into standing in the canteen line for rolls and coffee, sometimes an hour’s wait, and a job so humble he wouldn’t even ask Red to do it unless it were important.

  “And here he comes,” Red said, “just like he never left.”

  Chilly turned to watch Nunn walking towards them through the clusters of shivering cons sheltered under the rain shed. He moved as if he were seriously ill and there was nothing in his drained and leaden face to contradict this impression except the brittle light of his flat gray eyes.

  “You come back to die?” Chilly asked.

  “No, to build myself up. Those streets tear up your health.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Well, what’d you bring this time?” Chilly asked.

  “Nothing much. A one to five for Receiving.”

  “Receiving?” Chilly was incredulous.

  “They set me up, Chilly. They flat set me up. In court they claimed I’d turned out Jimmy Brown—you remember him?”

  “The freak they used to call Frosty?”

  “That’s the one. They claimed I put him to boosting for his fixes.”

  “Did you?”

  “More or less.”

  “That’s you then, isn’t it?”

  “One stinking suit. That’s what they nailed me on.”

  “It was good enough, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess it was. We’re not holding this conversation in the lobby of the St. Francis.”

  “And how many times have you stood right here and said no one but a fool would steal anything but money?”

  “Okay, Chilly.”

  “I hope you looked real clean in that hot suit.”

  “It didn’t fit.”

  Red started laughing and Nunn turned to ask, “You still putting out them withered backs of yours?”

  “I ain’t puttin out nothing ’cept’n old people’s eyeballs.”

  “Well.” Chilly ignored the byplay. “You had your vacation. How long? Seven months?”

  “Closer to six.”

  “That’s no record, but you’re whipping around pretty fast. Well, it’s only a nickel, even if they stick it all to you, you can still see the end of it.”

  “Chilly, you going to score?” Red wanted to know.

  “Just hang tough until I find a horse to put in the line.”

  Nunn slapped his hollow stomach. “Good. Long as I’ve been looking at that slop, I still can’t eat it. You’d think I’d get used to it.”

  “It’s not really food,” Chilly said in the solemn mocking tone he thought of as his educational voice. “It’s more like fuel. Like Presto logs. It’ll keep you moving around if you don’t want to move too fast, and they’re not keen to have you move too fast anyway.”

  “This time I’d like to make some of those variety shows they put on for the free people. They scoff them good steaks.”

  “What’re you going to do on the variety show,” Red wanted to know. “Perform on the meat whistle?”

  “Hit it, punk,” Nunn said. “I wouldn’t move in on your specialty.”

  “Your mammy’s specialty,” Red countered.

  But Nunn had turned back to Chilly. “How about it, Chilly, couldn’t you get us on the show as stagehands, or some other lightweight shuck. We could lay up and eyeball them fine broads, then fix on free-world food.”

  “Maybe,” Chilly said.

  “You want to get in some righteous eyeballing?” Red asked, beginning to clamor for attention. “Make it to church. Some of them Christer broads are all right.”

  “All right for your mammy,” Nunn said. “Adenoidal, pinch-breasted, dry-crotched, nowhere bunch of hymn-singing pigs.”

  “Your mammy’s a pig.”

  Chilly Willy sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I stand out here year after year listening to you two swapping mammies.”

  “Because you got nothing better to do and nowhere else to do it,” Nunn said in a much different tone from the one he used for banter with Red.

  Chilly smiled an acknowledgment, but made no answer. He had continued to monitor the men who were still filtering from the mess hall, and now he stepped forward to call, “Larson!” Then he hooked his thumbs in his back pockets while he waited for Larson to come to him. Chilly Willy wasn’t corny. He created an impression of taut, finely drawn, but elastic strength, and with it
there was a contrary suggestion of denseness as if he would be difficult to move from any spot where he had chosen to stand. His eyes were habitually mocking, elaborately insincere, but they also conveyed a sense of still, cold bottoms.

  “You owe me?” Chilly asked when Larson was shuffling unhappily in front of him. Larson nodded. “And you’ve been owing me for some time?”

  Nunn and Society Red watched, but without any pose of menace. Menace wasn’t their game. Each of them in his own way was interested in the discomfort Larson was so obviously experiencing. Society Red inserted his left index finger in his right nostril and his eyes grew somber as he mined this lode. He removed something, examined it, then wiped it on his pants leg.

  Chilly was nodding thoughtfully. “I may have to sell your debt to Gasolino for collection. You’ve heard of Gasolino?”

  Larson had. Everyone had. Nunn and Society Red were smiling now watching the dismay on Larson’s face. They were Gasolino’s buddies and this was their share of his power. Nunn had come up in the same four-square blocks with Gasolino, the lapland between a poor white neighborhood and an even poorer Mexican neighborhood, and they had smoked their first pot together, tea they had called it then or gage, and banged their first bitches and gone on heavy together. Now they all knew Gasolino had flipped—the evidence was clear in his round mad eyes. For years he had been sniffing the carbon tet from the joint fire extinguishers. The Mexican boys had named him Gasolino because he drank gasoline mixed with milk.

  He was an excellent collector of bad debts not because he was the most dangerous man in the prison, though he was dangerous enough, but because he didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. He was always laughing even when he was sticking shoe leather to someone’s head.

  “I’ll get it up, Chilly,” Larson was saying. “Everything’s been going sour on me, but I got stuff coming. You’ll get paid.”

  “I better. And for now, suppose you jump in that canteen line and get me a package of rolls and three jars of coffee.”

  “Sure, Chilly,” Larson said already moving. “Glad to.”

  Nunn watched Larson take his place at the end of the line. “Fear’s an awful thing to see,” he said lightly.

  “Yeah,” Chilly agreed. “We’ll brood about it while we scoff them rolls.”

  The big yard was beginning to clear. The last men had moved reluctantly from the warmth of the mess hall and now the sluggish traffic was shifting through the big gate at the head of the yard. The guards stood with their hands in their pockets, neither looking nor not looking. Occasionally they said “move along” to no one in particular. Assigned men were supposed to be going to work, but since out of the five thousand there were over fifteen hundred unassigned it was impossible in most instances to know who was supposed to be heading towards their jobs and who didn’t have to—or didn’t get to, depending upon their individual attitude. The guards watched the blue figures moving along with denim collars turned up and long-billed caps pulled down and they quickly became a shuffling blur. “The bastards all look the same,” the guards said. They were like cowboys riding the edge of a vast herd—and only the exceptional or troublesome animal ever became fixed in their minds as an individual.

  By seven-thirty Chilly’s horse was fifty men from the head of the canteen line, and the sun they still couldn’t see was beginning to glow on the breasts of the seagulls drifting restlessly from wall to wall. The domino games were starting, and a quartet of Negroes were loud-talking each other, their voices clearly audible a hundred feet away.

  “Sucker, you bes’ be keerful. I stick big-six to yore ass.”

  “Now, you jus’ signifying, fool. I got big-six myself.”

  “Maybe you eat it too.”

  “Get on! You can’t play no dominos, you jus’ play mouf.”

  They slammed the dominos at the wooden table with furious energy.

  The yard crew, all outpatient psych cases, came sweeping down with street brooms. They moved in a line like beaters attempting to flush a tiger. They flushed orange peels, apple cores, and empty cigarette packs.

  Chilly was beginning to take a few bets. He was currently booking football. In the winter he booked basketball and in the spring and summer baseball. When the tracks were running he booked horses. He was prepared to make some bet on any fight, national or local, or any other sports event except marble tournaments and frog jumping contests. He felt he did well.

  By convict standards he was a millionaire. In various places throughout the institution he had approximately three hundred cartons of cigarettes. Several men who had reputations for holding big stuff were little more than the managers of one of Chilly’s warehouses. He never exposed their floor shows. They took heat off him and when occasionally they were busted and the cigarettes lost to confiscation, Chilly accepted it as a business reverse. If he cornered every butt in the joint and a year of futures he still wouldn’t have anything, but the slower and more difficult accumulation of soft money could some day mean something. In the hollow handle of the broom leaning carelessly in the corner of his cell he had a roll of bills totaling close to a thousand dollars. If the Classification Committee became careless he might get a chance to use it.

  This was money he had made handling nasal inhalers. The economics of this trade were fierce and the profits, by anyone’s standards, enormous.

  Chilly had hit the big yard broke at twenty-three. He had borrowed enough to subscribe to a national sports sheet, and by consistently following the picks of the experts, rather than betting by signs, hunches and hometown prejudice, he had won far more than he had lost. A steady flow of cigarettes had moved into his hands, but they had proved an inconvenience and he had decided to put them to work. He needed an important horse, a free man horse, and he had finally settled on a clerk in the mail office, a small man with meager eyes and a sad fringe of soft hair. His name was Harmon and he was partially crippled. Chilly had made friends with Harmon and had spent hours telling Harmon how different kinds of girls were, thinking with some bitterness that he probably knew even less from actual experience than the small brown man who listened to him so avidly. On Harmon’s birthday Chilly had given him a hand-tooled wallet he had taken in lieu of a debt from an inmate hobby worker. In the secret compartment he had placed a twenty-dollar bill. Harmon hadn’t returned the bill to Chilly, and he hadn’t reported it to custody either. He’s ready, Chilly had decided.

  But it had been another month before Harmon would start packing. He had been scared, but he had been greedy, too, and he had wavered, and once had almost cried. But Chilly had continued to press him until Harmon agreed to smuggle the nasal inhalers in his lunch. Then, of course, he hadn’t been able to stop. Chilly paid him well.

  These inhalers of various brands were packed with an average of three hundred milligrams of amphetamine sulphate or some similar drug with the same properties, and retailed in any drugstore for approximately seventy-five cents. Harmon was paid two dollars for each tube he smuggled in, and Chilly, without ever touching them, turned them over to his front man in the gym.

  At this point the inhalers were cracked open and the cottons in which the active drug was suspended were removed. It was tacitly understood that if a tube were cut into thirds, the thirds were sold for halves, and if it were cut into fourths, the fourths were sold for thirds, on down to tenths which were actually fifteenths. Such a fifteenth, wrapped in wax paper, was sold for either three dollars soft money or a carton of cigarettes. The profit was approximately thirty-five dollars on a single inhaler.

  The wads of charged cotton were known as leapers because of the energy and optimism they released in the men who choked them down, but except for those just below Chilly no mainline user ever managed to secure enough of the drug to do more than mildly stimulate himself, and having already paid high for this, he promptly paid a second time with a sleepless night where he lay up listening to the faint jingle and creak of the guards moving through the darkness, and continued to pay through the memor
ies of the women he had once known, more vivid now and swelling until they seemed almost tangible in the feel of his hot crumpled pillow and the lonely dream of his hand. And pay finally watching the bars emerge against the dawn of another prison day.

  “No more,” they said. It was better to build time as a vegetable than to suffer as a man. But a week would pass and this powerful antidote for monotony would begin to seem attractive again, and they would find themselves thinking, “If I could just score enough to really get on.” And they would start scheming on the money that would further enrich Chilly Willy.

  The money came in over the visiting table. Their women brought it—the mothers, daughters, girl friends, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, and wives. Custody was aware of this, and procedures had been established to prevent it, but there was a major flaw in their routine. It had long been observed that officers conducting shakedowns were skittish around the crotch. They slapped vigorously and thoroughly up the legs until instinct warned them that their next upward reach would encounter the mechanism hanging there and they stopped suddenly and shifted their attention to another part of the body. Some inmates had small pockets sewn in the crotches of their shorts, others carried a piece of adhesive tape to fix the bill to their scrotum.

  Money flowed in steadily, saved out of the women’s small salaries, saved out of their pension and welfare checks, not only as a further gift of life to their fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers, but because the women almost always hated the system of bars, locks, and badges more than their men.

  The edge of the sun was beginning to show over the east block before the rolls and coffee were delivered to Chilly. The yard began to warm, the sky was clear. They unbuttoned their jackets. During the fall and winter, any day it didn’t rain was a good day.

  Chilly opened the rolls and squeezed one of them. He smiled wryly. These rolls sat in a supermarket until it came time to rotate them, then they were sold without reduction in price on the inmate canteen. That this practice differed in no essential from selling a third of a tube for a half was an irony that wasn’t lost on Chilly Willy.